In other words, they were cutting edge awesome.
Behind the two behemoth diving suits, lay a small hyperbaric chamber — a solemn and constant reminder of the risks faced with deep sea diving.
Sam finished his sandwich and glanced at Tom, who’d not only consumed his meal, but had also managed to down a large bottle of water in the process.
“All right,” Sam said. “Are you good to go?”
“Always,” Tom confirmed.
Sam looked at Veyron — who maintained their array of submersible machines. “Are you happy?”
“To let you and Tom out for a play with my two babies?” Veyron asked. “Never. But they’re fully prepared to dive. Just don’t forget they cost the company a little over half a million dollars apiece.”
Sam laughed. “Hey, I signed the check. I doubt I’ll forget.”
Tom said, “Do you have any idea where we should be looking?”
“Yeah, according to my father, the Clarion Call’s secret smuggler’s compartment would have been located amidships, well below the water-line. The idea was that the secret compartment would be filled with whatever contraband was intended to be shipped while the ship was empty and rode high in the water. Then, after she was loaded with her legal cargo, that compartment would rest beneath the waterline.”
Tom smiled. “And the water pressure would in turn, seal this hidden hatch, so that no amount of force could cajole it to open until the main cargo was offloaded. At that point, the ship was high enough that the compartment was above the waterline again.”
“Exactly.”
It took nearly twenty minutes for each of them to climb inside their respective diving suits, secure their harnesses, lock their watertight seals, and run-through the start-up procedure using a check-list that made piloting a helicopter seem simple.
Then, one by one, Veyron lowered each of the advanced atmospheric diving machines into the water.
Sam watched as the seawater rushed over the dome-shaped viewing port. A moment later, he released the tether, and took control of his submersible.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Sam adjusted the ballast, slowly taking in water until the heavily modified Exosuit became negatively buoyant. At a depth of thirty feet, he brought it back to neutral buoyancy. Beside him, Tom did the same.
He ran his eyes across a series of gauges, confirming that his power and life-support systems were all functioning correctly. Happy with the results, he depressed his radio microphone and said, “How are you looking, Tom?”
The Exosuit used a combination of UQC and 27 KHZ Acoustic which were heterodyned. This was a radio technique used to shift an inputted frequency from one to another through modulation in order to achieve successful transmission — to a high pitch radio frequency for acoustic transmission through water.
“Everything’s looking good,” came Tom’s reply. “You ready to descend?”
“Yeah, I’m good. All right, I’m starting my descent, now.”
Sam opened the ballast tanks, and water flooded in while large air bubbles were expelled, until his Exosuit began its continuous descent to the seabed below. The clear surface water rapidly turned into a cloudy darkness.
A small school of large, silvery fish, swam by. At first, Sam instinctively made a sharp turn away from them, as though expecting them to be a large predator. Then, realizing that the Exosuit offered no harm, turned again to brush by, making a cursory examination. After thirty or so seconds, having discovered nothing to reward their curiosity, the fish disappeared.
Sam glanced at his depth gauge.
They were already at a depth of two hundred and fifty feet.
At four hundred feet, an underwater current carrying debris made their world turn to near complete darkness.
He switched on his overhead LED lights, providing a thick stream of light ahead. Next to him, he spotted Tom’s lights pop on. Sam glanced across at his depth gauge. They were coming up on five hundred feet. His eyes turned to the bathymetric sonar array, which gave a colored delineation of the seabed far below.
At six-hundred-feet, the seabed became a series of undulating submerged valleys and hills. The crests were at six-hundred, while the troughs were up to seven hundred and fifty feet.
The Clarion Call came into view, positioned with its stern within a deep trough, while its bow rose upward near the six-hundred-feet mark.
Figures. Sam grinned, amused by fate.
The secret smuggling compartment was located near the stern, in the deepest part of the ship. Not that it mattered. The Exosuit had a theoretical crush depth of 2000 and could be safely operated without any concern anywhere below a 1000.
Tom said, “I’ve picked up the wreck of the scuttled Clarion Call.”
“I see it. We’ll head for the stern, and then work our way up until we reach the smuggling compartment.”
Thirty seconds later, Sam reached the Clarion Call’s stern.
He added some gas to the ballast tanks, slowing his rate of descent until he eased to a standstill approximately thirty feet from the seabed.
Both divers studied the wreckage.
Despite its age and time spent at the bottom of the sea, the Clarion Call was in good condition. In the early eighties, she was one of the fastest cargo ships on the oceans. Mike Reilly, his grandfather, had happily paid well to ensure her engineering allowed him to beat all other competitors on speed and reliability.
Sam swept his eyes across the hull. Despite a thin layer of rust, the bulk of the ship was still in perfect condition, listing thirty degrees to her starboard side. Two large openings to the stern showed where the dedicated soldiers from the 832nd Ordnance Battalion US Marine Corps, under the command of Major Roger Goodson, had planted C4 to scuttle the ship.
Tom said, “Tell me the hatch to the secret compartment was on the portside.”
“We’re good. It’s on the portside.”
Sam placed slightly greater pressure on the balls of his feet, triggering the Exosuit’s quad thrusters to move him toward amidships, while maintaining his upright position. It didn’t take long to reach the opening.
The giant hatch — roughly ten feet high by five wide — looked like it had maintained its structural integrity as the Clarion Call went to the bottom, until the external pressure became too great, and the door imploded.
Sam glanced inside and hoped to hell whatever secrets once stored inside hadn’t been destroyed in the process.
The opening was large enough that they could both comfortably maneuver their large Exosuits inside the remnants of the smuggler’s compartment.
Sam adjusted his position and the quad-thrusters whirred into life, sending him inside. He flashed a beam of light around the room. The crumpled remains of the once hidden hatchway were located straight ahead, but the rest of the twenty feet by forty feet vault, appeared empty.
His mouth went dry as his heart sped up. Had he got it all wrong or had someone retrieved the secrets he needed so desperately?
Over his headset, he heard Tom say, “I think I just found what we were looking for.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Tom stared at the ghastly remains of the man at the corner of the smuggler’s vault.
He wore a dark business suit and what appeared to be a red necktie, but after nearly two decades, all that remained of his fleshly body was his skeleton and the scatterings of loose bones. Still attached to what appeared to be an ulna or possibly a radius bone — one of the two lower arm bones — was a locked handcuff and chain, that was attached to a small metallic suitcase.